I've been looking for stackable coffee cups for a long time. The idea of designing my own -- with the ability to make them hollow walled (!!) -- is tremendous.
One interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts.
One interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts
When you arrive at a design which is commercially feasible in larger volumes, you'd use the printed design for making plaster casting moulds, then use clay slip casting to produce the same cup over and over...
Are you saying you're trying to make them hollow for a dewar effect? I'm not sure if they'll let you do a hollow wall as it's really annoying to get the excess powder out from enclosed volumes (via a small hole usually).
With 3D printing - you do get volume discounts, but Shapeways has always reached the max of these discounts. After this, the companies need to start dropping machine/material prices and engineering for less labor in the post-processing.
They're made by http://www.viridis3d.com/ceramics.htm The materials are dirt cheap ;-) and I believe they were applying the glaze by dipping them in racks.
I love this. I have in my mind a future where we don't just use open source software for our computers, but we use open source designs for our home appliances and electronics. I have the feeling that, if done well, you could get all sorts of very nice stuff for almost nothing. The next big revolution, after the information revolution, will be the home fabrication revolution.
Very nice idea. Some of the designs are very funny (spouted cup, aroma cup). At 50$+ a cup, I wonder who'll actually buy them. But as they say at the beginning of the article, the intention is to experiment and not profit?
I just ordered several cups as Christmas gifts. I have a few relatives for whom these should be just perfect -- the combination of 3D printing, unexpected topologies and coffee is like a holy trinity that touches on all their interests :)
Most of the designs don't look that great and certainly aren't worth the price. But I don't think the point of the project was to really sell any cups, rather than to show how far the technology and processes have improved.
This is inspirational. I'm going to try to reproduce some of these cups using traditional means: throwing on the potter's wheel, and some assembly when the clay is leather hard.
For example, the 'half cup' isn't hard to make, and a great joke cup for when you ask someone "Do you want another coffee?" and she answers: "Hmmmm, ok, a half one then".
The octocup is easy too, just attach 8 handles to a standard cup, but the effect is surprising. The 'double espresso cup' is the same, only two handles vertically stacked.
And a cup with two bullhorns ;-) What would be a nice name for that cup? A 'Texas Cup'?
I would use a modeler that uses solids, like Vellum Cobalt or SolidWorks (both on the list). However, those aren't free or even low-cost. However, they make creating objects like coffee cups a lot easier and they're a lot more precise.
Edit: The post was removed, but the question was: which program to use to design coffee cups with for ordering with Shapeways.
Sorry about nuking the post, we had a race condition :) I realized that all product names on that list [1] were clickable, and so I decided to first look at the products one by one and then come back with more specific questions.
Would Sketch Up work in your opinion? Also Mathematica is available under non-commercial license for $295, which is reasonable (and I always wanted a copy of it anyways).
I'd advise you not to use SketchUp for this. When creating organic shapes it's best to use solids [1], not mesh modeling. Otherwise your coffee cups will look like they've escaped from Tron.
Ashlar has a lite version of Cobalt, called Argon - a commercial license costs $1200 or you can rent it [2]. There's also an educational license for $200 [3].
A less costly program that supports solids is TurboCAD, at $500 [4]. I've never used it, but like Ashlar Vellum, they've been around forever.
Sketch Up would not be a good option because it produces mesh models which look like garbage when printed, a good low cost Nurbs modeling software that produces true curves for digital fabrication would be Rhino 3d. The educational version of Rhino is $195. http://www.rhino3d.com/
Edit: and if you want to make your cups parametric like the examples the grasshopper plugin for Rhino is the way to go http://www.grasshopper3d.com/
They're targeting hobbyists (software is completely free) that want a sketchup-like environment. They even provide a 3d printing service for you to upload STL files to.
That actually looks promising. To my knowledge, it's the first gratis solid modeler. The user interface is very similar to Autodesk's Inventor Fusion. It's also on the Shapeways' list of supported programs (by way of STL -- I find it odd that they don't use ACIS, but hey.)
My designer friends are salivating over this. Does the future mean a home-fabricator as a household item, where we can create tools as well as edible items? I can imagine it would cut down on waste. The business model, like an iTunes for 3D models, will be massive.
Don't forget that for useful household ceramics you need a lot more than just a 3D printer alone -- You'll need equipment and materials to glaze, and a ceramics kiln (which you can't fire in your kitchen).
It's less a factor of price for most things than just the material properties of the finished product and the fact that most things aren't a blob of material, but have circuit board, etc. that requires assembly.
That said - cups, jewelry, etc. that can be made at once don't have these material/assembly issues. Jewelry only costs $20 more to do using 3D printed patterned (as opposed to molded patterns), but with ceramic cups you're right: price is the biggest hang up currently.
One interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts.
(pun intended)